98-811: The Danevirke or Danework (modern Danish spelling: Dannevirke ; in Old Norse : Danavirki , in German : Danewerk , literally meaning earthwork of the Danes ) is a system of Danish fortifications in Schleswig-Holstein , Germany. This historically important linear defensive earthwork across the neck of the Cimbrian peninsula was initiated by the Danes in the Nordic Iron Age about AD 650. It
196-674: A scheduled monument . However, some parts of the Dyke may also remain buried under later development. Some sections are also defined as Sites of Special Scientific Interest , including stretches within the Lower Wye Valley SSSI and the Highbury Wood National Nature Reserve . Parts are located within the Wye Valley and Shropshire Hills Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty . Most of
294-429: A "difficult language to learn, acquire and understand", and some evidence shows that children are slower to acquire the phonological distinctions of Danish compared with other languages. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong (irregular) and weak (regular) conjugations and inflections. Nouns, adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. Like English, Danish only has remnants of
392-577: A former case system , particularly in the pronouns. Unlike English, it has lost all person marking on verbs. Its word order is V2 , with the finite verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence. Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch . Other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of
490-656: A great trench and strong rampart, fortified with several towers, from sea to sea. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, Bk 1-5 However, the solution to the problem lies a few chapters later in Bede's account. In Book One Chapter Twelve of Bede's Ecclesiastical History , he writes that the Romans "built a strong wall of stone directly from sea to sea in a straight line between the towns that had been built as strong-points, where Severus had built his earthwork ... straight from east to west". The strong wall of stone cannot refer to
588-526: A literary language. Also in this period, Danish began to take on the linguistic traits that differentiate it from Swedish and Norwegian, such as the stød , the voicing of many stop consonants, and the weakening of many final vowels to /e/. The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495, the Rimkrøniken ( Rhyming Chronicle ), a history book told in rhymed verses. The first complete translation of
686-580: A matter of historical debate why the railway to Flensburg was never properly used for the evacuation. News of the retreat came as a great shock to Danish public opinion which had considered the Danevirke to be impregnable, and General de Meza was promptly relieved of his command. The Danevirke has remained in German possession ever since. Following the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II ,
784-473: A naval incident on 19 April. Therefore, on 23 April, General Friedrich von Wrangel marched his 12,000 Prussian troops upon weak Danish resistance at the Danevirke entrenchment and, after a short engagement near the town of Dannewerk , drove the Danish army into retreat and seized the city of Schleswig . An armistice signed on 2 August 1848 caused the Prussians to evacuate Schleswig-Holstein but did not end
882-654: A number of Danes remained as a minority within German territories . After the occupation of Denmark by Germany in World War II, the 1948 orthography reform dropped the German-influenced rule of capitalizing nouns, and introduced the letter ⟨å⟩ . Three 20th-century Danish authors have become Nobel Prize laureates in Literature : Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes V. Jensen (awarded 1944). With
980-455: A series of dates. In one section, these ranged from AD 430 to AD 652 and in another section from AD 887 to AD 1019: confirming that the bank is clearly post-Roman, and that at least some rebuilding work took place after Offa's reign. It has been suggested that Offa's Dyke may have been a long-term project by several Mercian kings. Further excavations by Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust on the Dyke at Chirk Castle found well-preserved remains of
1078-482: A similarity in pronunciation, combined with the long tradition of having Danish as a written language, which has led to similarities in vocabulary. Among younger Danes, Copenhageners are worse at understanding Swedish than Danes from the provinces. In general, younger Danes are not as good at understanding the neighboring languages as the young in Norway and Sweden. The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided
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#17327658164431176-586: A so-called multiethnolect in the urban areas, an immigrant Danish variety (also known as Perkerdansk ), combining elements of different immigrant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish, as well as English and Danish. Within the Danish Realm , Danish is the national language of Denmark and one of two official languages of the Faroe Islands (alongside Faroese ). There is a Faroese variant of Danish known as Gøtudanskt . Until 2009, Danish
1274-625: A variant of Standard Danish, Southern Schleswig Danish , is spoken in the area. Since 2015, Schleswig-Holstein has officially recognized Danish as a regional language , just as German is north of the border. Furthermore, Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , Danish-speaking citizens of
1372-407: A very large vowel inventory consisting of 27 phonemically distinctive vowels , and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød , a kind of laryngeal phonation type . Due to the many pronunciation differences that set Danish apart from its neighboring languages, particularly the vowels, difficult prosody and "weakly" pronounced consonants, it is sometimes considered to be
1470-700: Is a West Germanic language descended from Old English. Old Norse exerted a strong influence on Old English in the early medieval period. The shared Germanic heritage of Danish and English is demonstrated with many common words that are very similar in the two languages. For example, when written, commonly used Danish verbs, nouns, and prepositions such as have , over , under , for , give , flag , salt , and arm are easily recognizable to English speakers. Similarly, some other words are almost identical to their Scots equivalents, e.g. kirke (Scots kirk , i.e., 'church') or barn (Scots and northern English bairn , i.e. 'child'). In addition,
1568-527: Is about 30 kilometres (19 mi) long overall, with a height varying between 3.6 and 6 metres (12 and 20 ft). During the Middle Ages , the structure was reinforced with palisades and masonry walls, and was used by Danish kings as a gathering point for Danish military excursions, including a series of crusader raids against the Slavs of the south Baltic. In particular, the 12th-century King Valdemar
1666-430: Is its closest relative. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish Approximately 2,000 uncompounded Danish words are derived from Old Norse and ultimately from Proto Indo-European . Of these 2,000, 1,200 are nouns, 500 are verbs and 180 are adjectives. Danish has also absorbed many loanwords , most of which were borrowed from Low German of
1764-413: Is now often seen as secondary to the modern path, and heritage advice about individual dyke sections is not generally coordinated via any connected overview of the values of the whole monument. Moreover, despite the lasting legacy of Offa's Dyke for English and Welsh communities alike, there is limited public awareness of the monument and its remarkable link to modern ideas of national identity. The proposal
1862-612: Is protected as a scheduled monument . Some of its route is followed by the Offa's Dyke Path , a 177-mile (285 km) long-distance footpath that runs between Liverpool Bay in the north and the Severn Estuary in the south. Although the Dyke has conventionally been dated to the Early Middle Ages of Anglo-Saxon England, research in recent decades – using techniques such as radioactive carbon dating – has challenged
1960-436: The skarre-R , the uvular R sound ( [ʁ] ), began spreading through Denmark, likely through influence from Parisian French and German. It affected all of the areas where Danish had been influential, including all of Denmark, Southern Sweden, and coastal southern Norway. In the 18th century, Danish philology was advanced by Rasmus Rask , who pioneered the disciplines of comparative and historical linguistics, and wrote
2058-535: The Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia from AD 757 until 796, who is traditionally believed to have ordered its construction. Although its precise original purpose is debated, it delineated the border between Anglian Mercia and the Welsh kingdom of Powys . The earthwork, which was up to 65 feet (20 m) wide (including its flanking ditch) and 8 feet (2.4 m) high, traversed low ground, hills and rivers. Today it
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#17327658164432156-623: The Bible in Danish, the Bible of Christian II translated by Christiern Pedersen , was published in 1550. Pedersen's orthographic choices set the de facto standard for subsequent writing in Danish. From around 1500, several printing presses were in operation in Denmark publishing in Danish and other languages. In the period after 1550, presses in Copenhagen dominated the publication of material in
2254-645: The Jutland peninsula from the northern extent of the Frankish empire. However, the Danes were also in conflict with the Saxons south of Hedeby during the Nordic Iron Age, and recent archaeological excavations have revealed that the Danevirke was initiated much earlier than King Gudfred's reign, at least as far back as 500 AD and probably well before that. Because of its historical importance and testimony to
2352-570: The Late Middle Ages . Out of the 500 most frequently used Danish words, 100 are loans from Middle Low German; this is because Low German was the second official language of Denmark–Norway. In the 17th and 18th centuries, standard German and French superseded Low German influence, and in the 20th century, English became the main supplier of loanwords, especially after World War II . Although many old Nordic words remain, some were replaced with borrowed synonyms, for example æde (to eat)
2450-467: The Old Norse language ; Danish and Swedish are also classified as East Scandinavian or East Nordic languages. Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum , where no sharp dividing lines are seen between the different vernacular languages. Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, and has been influenced by English since
2548-486: The Second Schleswig War (1864), eventually resulting in a Danish defeat and subsequent German annexation. In this hostile context, the Danevirke played an important role, at first as a mental cultural barrier against Germany, but soon also as a concrete military fortification, when it was strengthened with cannon emplacements and entrenchments in 1850 and again in 1861. In the early 19th Century Dannevirke
2646-688: The Viking Era . Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group , while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Norwegian Bokmål are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic . A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian , and Swedish as "mainland (or continental ) Scandinavian", while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as "insular Scandinavian". Although
2744-598: The Wall of Severus , a structure built by Septimius Severus , who was Roman Emperor between 193 and 211: Novissimum bellum in Britannia habuit, utque receptas provincias omni securitate muniret, vallum per CXXXIII passuum milia a mari ad mare deduxit. Decessit Eboraci admodum senex, imperii anno sexto decimo, mense tertio. Historiae Romanae Breviarium, viii 19.1 He had his most recent war in Britain, and to fortify
2842-516: The Wehrmacht feared that a second Allied invasion might take place through Denmark, and contemplated converting the earthen wall into an anti-tank trench to counter this threat. Had the proposal been implemented, it would have destroyed the structure. Hearing of the plans, Danish archaeologist Søren Telling – aware that all archaeological investigation was under the ultimate jurisdiction of SS chief Heinrich Himmler – immediately telephoned both
2940-544: The Zealand dialect Introductio ad lingvam Danicam puta selandicam ; and in 1685 the first Danish grammar written in Danish, Den Danske Sprog-Kunst ("The Art of the Danish Language") by Peder Syv . Major authors from this period are Thomas Kingo , poet and psalmist, and Leonora Christina Ulfeldt , whose novel Jammersminde ( Remembered Woes ) is considered a literary masterpiece by scholars. Orthography
3038-402: The introduction of the printing press , a standard language was developed which was based on the educated dialect of Copenhagen and Malmö . It spread through use in the education system and administration, though German and Latin continued to be the most important written languages well into the 17th century. Following the loss of territory to Germany and Sweden, a nationalist movement adopted
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3136-541: The 19th Century, the Danevirke became a powerful symbol for Denmark and for the idea of a unique Danish people and Danish culture . Throughout the nineteenth century, Denmark and Germany struggled politically and militarily for possession of the territory variously known as Sønderjylland or Slesvig by the Danes and Schleswig by the Germans. Two wars were fought, the First Schleswig War (1848–1851) and
3234-444: The 19th century territory as far north as Flensburg was predominantly German-speaking, but remained part of Denmark. Archaeological excavations in 1969–1975 established, with the help of dendrochronology , that the main structure of the Danevirke had been built in three phases between AD 737 and 968. It is, therefore, contemporary with Offa's Dyke on the border between Wales and England , another great defensive structure of
3332-579: The 9th century with the younger futhark . Possibly as far back as the seventh century, the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, resulting in the appearance of two dialect areas, Old West Norse ( Norway and Iceland ) and Old East Norse ( Denmark and Sweden ). Most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway. A change that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from Old West Norse
3430-538: The Antonine Wall or Offa's Dyke, so it clearly refers to Hadrian's Wall, especially as Offa's Dyke runs from north to south. Also, as Severus's earthwork is described as being in the same location as Hadrian's Wall, it cannot be Offa's Dyke either, so the earth rampart with a great trench that Bede refers to must be the Vallum , the adjoining earthen barrier immediately south of Hadrian's Wall. Where Bede got it wrong
3528-652: The Danevirke. After centuries of abandonment and decay, the Danevirke fortifications were partially restored, strengthened, and equipped with artillery installations in 1850 and 1861. In the Second War of Schleswig, there was some early skirmishing to the south of the Danevirke, but no battle took place at it, as the Danish Commander in Chief, General de Meza , withdrew all soldiers to the trenches at Dybbøl , owing to an unexpected threat of being outflanked, as
3626-594: The Danish language, and also started a period of homogenization, whereby the Copenhagen standard language gradually displaced the regional vernacular languages. Throughout the 19th century, Danes emigrated, establishing small expatriate communities in the Americas, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Argentina, where memory and some use of Danish remains today. After the Schleswig referendum in 1920 ,
3724-517: The Danish language. Herrer og Narre have frit Sprog . "Lords and jesters have free speech." Peder Syv , proverbs Following the first Bible translation, the development of Danish as a written language , as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Danish, first among them Rasmus Bartholin 's 1657 Latin grammar De studio lingvæ danicæ ; then Laurids Olufsen Kock 's 1660 grammar of
3822-407: The Danish tongue." Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson By the eighth century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse . This language was generally called the "Danish tongue" ( Dǫnsk tunga ), or "Norse language" ( Norrœnt mál ). Norse was written in the runic alphabet , first with the elder futhark and from
3920-643: The Dark Ages (aired in 1979), show support for Noble's idea. Most recently, Hill and Margaret Worthington have undertaken considerable research on the Dyke. Their work, though far from finished, has demonstrated that there is little evidence for the Dyke stretching from sea to sea. Rather, they claim that it is a shorter structure stretching from Rushock Hill north of the Herefordshire Plain to Llanfynydd , near Mold, Flintshire , some 64 miles (103 km). According to Hill and Worthington, dykes in
4018-517: The Dyke itself, the Path is longer, and in some places passes at some distance from the earthworks. Opened on 10 July 1971, the Path is one of Britain's longest National Trails , stretching for 283 km (176 mi) from the Severn estuary at Sedbury , near Chepstow , to Prestatyn on the north Wales coast. There is a visitor centre at Knighton . The dyke has a cultural significance symbolising
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4116-474: The Dyke seriously compared their conclusions with the late 9th-century writer Asser , who wrote: "there was in Mercia in fairly recent time a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighbouring kings and provinces around him, and who had a great dyke built between Wales and Mercia from sea to sea". In 1955, Sir Cyril Fox published the first major survey of the Dyke. He concurred with Asser that
4214-617: The Dyke was proposed by the Offa's Dyke Association and local authorities for World Heritage Site status. Part of the proposal stated: Offa’s Dyke is a victim of its very scale, nature, meaning and historical success. It is located in two countries, six local authority areas, multiple ownerships and multiple land-use contexts. The main professional stakeholders – such as the English and Welsh path and heritage management agencies – are organisationally and functionally separate. The ancient monument
4312-647: The Faroe Islands , and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig , where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway , Sweden , the United States , Canada , Brazil , and Argentina . Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during
4410-685: The Fortress of Penygadden." And, for Gwent, Offa had the dyke built "on the eastern crest of the gorge, clearly with the intention of recognizing that the River Wye and its traffic belonged to the kingdom of Gwent". Ongoing research and archaeology on Offa's Dyke has been undertaken for many years by the Extra-Mural Department of the University of Manchester . Interviews with Dr David Hill, broadcast in episode 1 of In Search of
4508-592: The Great reinforced parts of the Danevirke with a brick wall, which enabled a continued military use of this strategically important structure. The reinforced parts of the structure are consequently known in Danish as Valdemarsmuren (lit: Valdemar's wall). The Danevirke began to lose its purpose in the 14th century, owing both to the expense of manning it and to the development of ballistas , trebuchets , and similar siege engines. The First Schleswig War commenced on 31 March 1848 but Prussia did not become involved until
4606-403: The Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs. Offa%27s Dyke Offa's Dyke ( Welsh : Clawdd Offa ) is a large linear earthwork that roughly follows the border between England and Wales . The structure is named after Offa ,
4704-710: The Old Norse word for "island". This monophthongization started in Jutland and spread eastward, having spread throughout Denmark and most of Sweden by 1100. Through Danish conquest, Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England . Many words derived from Norse, such as "gate" ( gade ) for street, still survive in Yorkshire , the East Midlands and East Anglia, and parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings . The city of York
4802-577: The Schlei and the wetlands between the Danevirke and Husum had frozen solid in a hard winter and could be crossed easily, and the territory immediately south of the Danevirke had been conquered by the advancing German army. This retreat came as a surprise to the Austro-Prussian army, and almost all of the Danish army succeeded in completing the evacuation. It resulted, however, in the abandonment of important pieces of heavy artillery, and it remains
4900-623: The Welsh (western) side, with the displaced soil piled into a bank on the Mercian (eastern) side. This suggests that Mercians constructed it as a defensive earthwork, or to demonstrate the power and intent of their kingdom. Throughout its entire length, the Dyke provides an uninterrupted view from Mercia into Wales. Where the earthwork encounters hills or high ground, it passes to the west of them. Although historians often overlook Offa's reign because of limitations in source material, he ranks as one of
4998-425: The accepted historiography of Offa's Dyke. Noble postulated that the gaps in the Dyke were not due to the incorporation of natural features as defensive barriers, but instead the gaps were a "ridden boundary", perhaps incorporating palisades , that left no archaeological trace. Noble also helped establish the Offa's Dyke Association, which maintains the Offa's Dyke Path . This long-distance footpath mostly follows
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#17327658164435096-600: The area, eventually outnumbering the Danish speakers. The political loss of territory sparked a period of intense nationalism in Denmark, coinciding with the so-called " Golden Age " of Danish culture. Authors such as N.F.S. Grundtvig emphasized the role of language in creating national belonging. Some of the most cherished Danish-language authors of this period are existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen . The influence of popular literary role models, together with increased requirements of education did much to strengthen
5194-723: The articles Dannevirke and Søren Telling on the Danish Misplaced Pages, accessed on 23 July 2006. Danish language Nordic Council Danish ( / ˈ d eɪ n ɪ ʃ / , DAY -nish ; endonym : dansk pronounced [ˈtænˀsk] , dansk sprog [ˈtænˀsk ˈspʁɔwˀ] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark . Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland ,
5292-557: The burnt charcoal and burnt clay in situ showed it was covered by earth on or around AD 446. Archaeologists concluded that this part of Wat's Dyke, so long thought of as Anglo-Saxon and a mid-8th-century contemporary of Offa's Dyke, must have been built 300 years earlier in the post-Roman period . In 2014, excavations by the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust focused on nine samples of the Dyke near Chirk . Radiocarbon dating of redeposited turf resulted in
5390-543: The conquered provinces with all security, he built a wall for 133 miles from sea to sea. He died at York, a reasonably old man, in the sixteenth year and third month of his reign. This source is conventionally thought to be referring, in error, to either Hadrian's Wall , 73 miles (117 km), or the Antonine Wall , 37 miles (60 km), which were both shorter and built in the 2nd century. Recently, some writers have suggested that Eutropius may have been referring to
5488-519: The conventional historiography and theories about the earthwork and shows that part was started in the early 5th century, during the sub-Roman period . The generally accepted theory of the earthwork attributes most of its construction to Offa , King of Mercia from 757 to 796. The structure did not represent a mutually agreed boundary between the Mercians and the Kingdom of Powys . It had a ditch on
5586-641: The defense of trade routes in the Viking Age, the Danevirke and the nearby Viking town of Hedeby were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018. Legend has it that Queen Thyra ordered the Danevirke to be built. She was the wife of the first historically recognized king of Denmark, Gorm the Old (reign c. 936 – c. 958). With the emergence of national states in Europe during
5684-520: The ditch under later parkland; radiocarbon samples were recovered, but the results have not yet been made public. The England–Wales border still mostly passes within a few miles of the course of Offa's Dyke through the Welsh Marches . A 3-mile (4.8 km) section of the Dyke which overlooks Tintern Abbey and includes the Devil's Pulpit near Chepstow is now managed by English Heritage . All sections of Offa's Dyke that survive as visible earthworks, or as infilled but undeveloped ditch, are designated as
5782-424: The earthwork later called Offa's Dyke. Most archaeologists reject this theory. The Venerable Bede also mentions the barrier built by Septimus Severus, but Bede says that the rampart was made of earth and timber, a description which would closer match Offa's Dyke than Hadrian's Wall , though it would describe the Antonine Wall : After many great and severe battles, (Severus) thought fit to divide that part of
5880-495: The earthwork ran 'from sea to sea', theorising that the Dyke ran from the River Dee estuary in the north to the River Wye in the south: approximately 150 miles (240 km). Although Fox observed that Offa's Dyke was not a continuous linear structure, he concluded that earthworks were raised in only those areas where natural barriers did not already exist. Sir Frank Stenton , the UK's most eminent 20th-century scholar on Anglo-Saxon England , accepted Fox's conclusions. He wrote
5978-431: The exclusive use of rigsdansk , the High Copenhagen Standard, in national broadcasting, the traditional dialects came under increased pressure. In the 20th century, they have all but disappeared, and the standard language has extended throughout the country. Minor regional pronunciation variation of the standard language, sometimes called regionssprog ("regional languages") remain, and are in some cases vital. Today,
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#17327658164436076-488: The extensive marshlands in the west of the peninsula. One of the walls (named Østervolden ), between the Schlei and Eckernförde inlets, defended the Schwansen peninsula. According to written sources, work on the Danevirke was started by the Danish King Gudfred in 808. Fearing an invasion by the Franks , who had conquered heathen Frisia over the previous 100 years and Old Saxony in 772 to 804, Godfred began work on an enormous structure to defend his realm, separating
6174-459: The far north and south may have different dates, and though they may be connected with Offa's Dyke, there is as yet no compelling evidence behind this. However, not all experts accept this view. 'Ofer' means 'border' or 'edge' in Old English, giving rise to the possibility of alternative derivations for some border features associated with Offa. The Roman historian Eutropius in his book Historiae Romanae Breviarium , written around 369, mentions
6272-451: The first English-language grammar of Danish. Literary Danish continued to develop with the works of Ludvig Holberg , whose plays and historical and scientific works laid the foundation for the Danish literary canon. With the Danish colonization of Greenland by Hans Egede , Danish became the administrative and religious language there, while Iceland and the Faroe Islands had the status of Danish colonies with Danish as an official language until
6370-577: The greatest Anglo-Saxon rulers – as evidenced in his ability to raise the workforce and resources required to construct Offa's Dyke. The construction of the earthwork probably involved a corvée system requiring vassals to build certain lengths of the earthwork for Offa in addition to performing their normal services to their king. The Tribal Hidage , a primary document, shows the distribution of land within 8th-century Britain; it shows that peoples were located within specified territories for administration. The first historians and archaeologists to examine
6468-428: The head of the SS's archaeological department, Amt für Ahnenerbe ("Office for ancestral heritage"), and Himmler himself. Telling argued strongly against the destruction of an important remnant of " Aryan civilization" and Himmler authorized him to stop the construction of the anti-tank trench. He informed Telling that a written order would be dispatched but that it would take several days to arrive. Telling then drove to
6566-426: The history of Danish into a period from 800 AD to 1525 to be "Old Danish", which he subdivided into "Runic Danish" (800–1100), Early Middle Danish (1100–1350) and Late Middle Danish (1350–1525). Móðir Dyggva var Drótt, dóttir Danps konungs, sonar Rígs er fyrstr var konungr kallaðr á danska tungu . " Dyggvi 's mother was Drott, the daughter of king Danp, Ríg 's son, who was the first to be called king in
6664-490: The introduction to Fox's account of the Dyke. Although Fox's work has now been revised to some extent, it still remains a vital record of some stretches of Offa's Dyke that still existed between 1926 and 1928, when his three field surveys took place, but have since been destroyed. In 1978, Dr Frank Noble challenged some of Fox's conclusions, stirring up new academic interest in Offa's Dyke. His MPhil thesis entitled "Offa's Dyke Reviewed" (1978) raised several questions concerning
6762-443: The island, which he had recovered, from the other unconquered nations, not with a wall, as some imagine, but with a rampart. For a wall is made of stones, but a rampart, with which camps are fortified to repel the assaults of enemies, is made of sods, cut out of the earth, and raised high above the ground, like a wall, having in front of it the trench whence the sods were taken, with strong stakes of wood fixed above it. Thus Severus drew
6860-424: The language as a token of Danish identity, and the language experienced a strong surge in use and popularity, with major works of literature produced in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though regional variants of the standard language exist. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative. Danish has
6958-414: The language of the courts. Since 1997, public authorities have been obliged to follow the official spelling system laid out in the Orthography Law. In the 21st century, discussions have been held with a view to create a law that would make Danish the official language of Denmark. In addition, a noticeable community of Danish speakers is in Southern Schleswig , the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, and
7056-442: The late 8th century. New carbon-14 dating in 2013 has revealed that the second stage started around 500 AD, and the oldest fortifications are even older than that. Previous carbon-14 dating had dated some of the early constructions to the second half of the 7th century, and dendrochronology also suggests that the examined constructions began not very long after 737, about 70 years before the reign of king Gudfred . The Danevirke
7154-419: The line of Offa's Dyke is designated as a public right of way , including those sections which form part of the Offa's Dyke Path. In August 2013, a 45-metre (148 ft) section of Dyke, between Chirk and Llangollen , was destroyed by a local landowner. The destruction of the Dyke to build a stable was said to be like "driving a road through Stonehenge ", but the perpetrator escaped punishment. In 2010,
7252-407: The major varieties of Standard Danish are High Copenhagen Standard, associated with elderly, well to-do, and well educated people of the capital, and low Copenhagen speech traditionally associated with the working class, but today adopted as the prestige variety of the younger generations. Also, in the 21st century, the influence of immigration has had linguistic consequences, such as the emergence of
7350-422: The mid-20th century. Moders navn er vort Hjertesprog, kun løs er al fremmed Tale. Det alene i mund og bog, kan vække et folk af dvale. "Mother's name is our hearts' tongue, only idle is all foreign speech It alone, in mouth or in book, can rouse a people from sleep." N.F.S. Grundtvig , "Modersmaalet" Following the loss of Schleswig to Germany, a sharp influx of German speakers moved into
7448-473: The route of the dyke and is a designated British National Trail . John Davies wrote of Fox's study: "In the planning of it, there was a degree of consultation with the kings of Powys and Gwent. On the Long Mountain near Trelystan , the dyke veers to the east, leaving the fertile slopes in the hands of the Welsh; near Rhiwabon , it was designed to ensure that Cadell ap Brochwel retained possession of
7546-465: The separation between England and Wales: a symbolism similar to Hadrian's Wall between England and Scotland in the Scottish Marches . George Borrow , in his Wild Wales (1862), drawn from folklore , claimed that: [It] was customary for the English to cut off the ears of every Welshman who was found to the east of the dyke, and for the Welsh to hang every Englishman whom they found to
7644-472: The shared written standard language remained). With the introduction of absolutism in 1660, the Danish state was further integrated, and the language of the Danish chancellery, a Zealandic variety with German and French influence, became the de facto official standard language , especially in writing—this was the original so-called rigsdansk ("Danish of the Realm"). Also, beginning in the mid-18th century,
7742-569: The site and ordered the commanding Wehrmacht officers to immediately stop the construction process. When the local Wehrmacht commander refused, Telling threatened him with reprisals from the SS. Construction was called off and Himmler's written order arrived two days later countering the Wehrmacht's original instructions. Telling later settled near the site and considered himself a custodian of it until his death in 1968. Parts of this article are based on
7840-486: The three languages can often understand the others fairly well, though studies have shown that the mutual intelligibility is asymmetric: Norwegian speakers generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Concomitantly, Swedes and Danes understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages. Norwegian occupies the middle position in terms of intelligibility because of its shared border with Sweden, resulting in
7938-445: The turn of the 20th century. Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas: Jutlandic (West Danish), Insular Danish (including the standard variety), and East Danish (including Bornholmian and Scanian ). According to the view that Scandinavian is a dialect continuum, East Danish can be considered intermediary between Danish and Swedish, while Scanian can be considered a Swedified East Danish dialect, and Bornholmian
8036-411: The vernacular language to be accessible also to those who were not Latinate. The Jutlandic Law and Scanian Law were written in vernacular Danish in the early 13th century. Beginning in 1350, Danish began to be used as a language of administration, and new types of literature began to be written in the language, such as royal letters and testaments. The orthography in this period was not standardized nor
8134-469: The vernacular, such as the plural form of verbs, should be conserved in writing (i.e. han er "he is" vs. de ere "they are"). The East Danish provinces were lost to Sweden after the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) after which they were gradually Swedified; just as Norway was politically severed from Denmark, beginning also a gradual end of Danish influence on Norwegian (influence through
8232-423: The war. Further engagements in the next two years saw fighting in the vicinity of the Danevirke but not directly involving it. Final peace was signed on 8 May 1852. The last military use of the Danevirke was during the Second Schleswig War in 1864. Due especially to the above-mentioned emotive nationalist symbolism, public opinion in Denmark and the Danish military had expected the coming battle to take place along
8330-516: The whore-bed with another man's wife and he comes away alive..." Jutlandic Law, 1241 In the medieval period, Danish emerged as a separate language from Swedish. The main written language was Latin, and the few Danish-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet, although the runic alphabet seems to have lingered in popular usage in some areas. The main text types written in this period are laws, which were formulated in
8428-492: The word by , meaning ‘village’ or ‘town’, occurs in many English place-names, such as Whitby and Selby , as remnants of the Viking occupation . During that period English adopted ‘are’, the third person plural form of the verb ‘to be’, as well as the personal pronouns ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’ from contemporary Old Norse. Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish . A proficient speaker of any of
8526-489: The written languages are compatible, spoken Danish is distinctly different from Norwegian and Swedish and thus the degree of mutual intelligibility with either is variable between regions and speakers . Until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Southern Jutland and Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and
8624-492: Was a territory ruled by Denmark–Norway , one of whose official languages was Danish. Though Danish ceased to be an official language in Iceland in 1944, it is still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school, taught as a second foreign language after English. No law stipulates an official language for Denmark, making Danish the de facto official language only. The Code of Civil Procedure does, however, lay down Danish as
8722-418: Was adopted as the title of several Danish nationalist journals dealing specifically with the question of Danish autonomy vis-à-vis Germany, the most notable of these being published by N. F. S. Grundtvig in 1816–19. In earlier times, the Danevirke had indeed defined a cultural and linguistic border between Danish and German fiefdoms , but the cultural and linguistic frontiers had gradually moved north, and by
8820-457: Was also one of two official languages of Greenland (alongside Greenlandic ). Danish now acts as a lingua franca in Greenland, with a large percentage of native Greenlanders able to speak Danish as a second language (it was introduced into the education system as a compulsory language in 1928). About 10% of the population speaks Danish as their first language , due to immigration. Iceland
8918-575: Was in attributing the Vallum to Septimius Severus, and saying that it predated the Wall. In fact the Vallum was the work of Hadrian , and slightly post-dated the Wall. Evidence has also been found that challenges the accepted date of the construction of Offa's Dyke. In December 1999, Shropshire County Council archaeologists uncovered the remains of a hearth or fire on the original ground surface beneath Wat's Dyke near Oswestry . Carbon dating analysis of
9016-579: Was later expanded multiple times during Denmark's Viking Age and High Middle Ages . The Danevirke was last used for military purposes in 1864 during the Second War of Schleswig . The Danevirke consists of several walls, trenches and the Schlei Barrier. The walls stretch for 30 km, from the former Viking trade centre of Hedeby near Schleswig on the Baltic Sea coast in the east to
9114-488: Was mostly supplanted by the Low German spise . As well as loanwords, new words can be freely formed by compounding existing words. In standard texts of contemporary Danish, Middle Low German loans account for about 16–17% of the vocabulary, Graeco-Latin loans 4–8%, French 2–4% and English about 1%. Danish and English are both Germanic languages. Danish is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse, and English
9212-627: Was once the Viking settlement of Jorvik. Several other English words derive from Old East Norse, for example "knife" ( kniv ), "husband" ( husbond ), and "egg" ( æg ). The suffix "-by" for 'town' is common in place names in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, for example Selby, Whitby, Derby, and Grimsby. The word "dale" meaning valley is common in Yorkshire and Derbyshire placenames. Fangær man saar i hor seng mæth annæns mansz kunæ. oc kumær han burt liuænd... . "If one catches someone in
9310-505: Was rejected in 2011. The Offa's Dyke Centre is a purpose-built information centre in the town of Knighton , on Offa's Dyke on the border between England ( Shropshire ) and Wales ( Powys ). Some of the best remains of the earthworks can be seen within a two-minute walk from the centre. The Offa's Dyke Path (Welsh: Llwybr Clawdd Offa ) is a long-distance footpath close to the England–Wales border . Although large sections are close to
9408-463: Was still not standardized and the principles for doing so were vigorously discussed among Danish philologists. The grammar of Jens Pedersen Høysgaard was the first to give a detailed analysis of Danish phonology and prosody, including a description of the stød . In this period, scholars were also discussing whether it was best to "write as one speaks" or to "speak as one writes", including whether archaic grammatical forms that had fallen out of use in
9506-469: Was the change of the diphthong æi (Old West Norse ei ) to the monophthong e , as in stæin to sten . This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . Also, a change of au as in dauðr into ø as in døðr occurred. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy (Old West Norse ey ) diphthong changed into ø , as well, as in
9604-474: Was the spoken language, and the regional laws demonstrate the dialectal differences between the regions in which they were written. Throughout this period, Danish was in contact with Low German , and many Low German loan words were introduced in this period. With the Protestant Reformation in 1536, Danish also became the language of religion, which sparked a new interest in using Danish as
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